PRO FOOTBALL '93 : Papa Dolphin : For Miami's Don Shula, Who Needs Only Seven Victories to Break George Halas' Record, Family Now Ranks Far Above Football

And that Cincinnati Bengal coach with the distinctive profile? He was 4.

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The public softening of Don Shula began at one of his most difficult moments. It was on a sound stage in south Florida last summer, while he was filming a United Way commercial in hopes of raising money for cancer research.

The commercial featured Shula's relationship with Dorothy, who had died about a year earlier. He did several takes, then asked to be excused.

He walked behind the sound boards and cried.

"Throughout my mother's illness, he changed," said Donna Jannach, the oldest of Shula's five children. "When he used to spend a lot of time with the family, he would be real edgy. Now, sometimes, it seems like it's hard for him to get back to work."

Although his current players will speak in little more than generalities about Shula--Mark Clayton once called him "the fat man," and today finds himself in Green Bay--there are also noticeable differences on the field.

There is less hitting in practice. During training camp this year, players were actually given Sundays off. He rarely scolds players while they are still on the field anymore.

Sometimes, he looks more like a distinguished CEO than a man whose constant prodding once caused Johnny Unitas to suddenly halt a play.

Unitas turned, handed Shula the ball and said, "Here,\o7 you\f7 be the quarterback."

"You can tell, he contains a lot of things within himself now," said Earl Morrall, a former quarterback who still attends some practices. "He is much more analytical. You can see it on the sidelines. Certain things that would bother him years ago, he handles differently today."

Jim Langer, Hall of Fame center during the 1970s, said: "The guys who play for Don Shula today, they don't see the same Don Shula we saw.

"I remember that my main goal every day in summer practice was not to make the team, but to keep Shula from chewing me out. I would do anything to keep him from yelling."

Langer remembers the only day of practice he did not have to worry about that.

"That's the day he threw me out of practice," he said. "I was a rookie, I pulled the wrong way, ran into the other guard, and I was gone. Just like that."

During his seven years in Baltimore and 23 in Miami, Shula has never cared much about the identity of the person he was yelling at.

He once threatened to punch out Joe Robbie, the Dolphins' owner, for humiliating him in front of friends.

He once yelled at Csonka for lining up one step too wide as a dummy blocker during a passing drill. Shula was 40 yards away at the time.

He once released a player immediately after learning that the player had challenged an assistant coach on an airplane trip.

Even touchdowns weren't always enough for him.

Morrall still remembers his first start with the Colts. He had moved the offense to the San Francisco 49ers' 12-yard line when he called a pattern for Ray Perkins.

"Ray was double-covered, but I didn't recognize it, so I threw to him anyway," Morrall recalled. "Somehow, he was able to slide around his man and caught the ball for a touchdown."

Morrall jogged happily toward the sidelines when he was met, five yards before he left the field, by an angry head coach.

"Shula yelled: 'What the hell were you doing?' " Morrall said. "He yelled: 'You were supposed to go to the flanker on the other side of the field! You threw to the wrong man!'

"I thought to myself, 'Didn't I just throw a touchdown pass?' "

Instead of alienating the players, though, Shula's behavior drew them closer. That has always been his strength, teaching people that winning at all costs is always a good buy.

"The man still gets after it when it comes to mental mistakes," said running back Tony Paige, who retired this spring. "One thing that hasn't changed is that he expects his players to perform at their highest level. Every day. It's something you never forget."

That was illustrated this winter in Miami during a 20-year reunion of the players from the 1972 team, the only NFL team to go unbeaten.

Only three of 47 did not show up. Many of them are successful business executives and entrepreneurs who will never forget where they first learned about dedication.

"I don't think anybody who has played for him has not walked away from the game with a different sense of what focus is," said Langer, a wholesale manufacturing representative. "Winning was important to Don. . . . But it was how we won that mattered."

Even if it meant watching stacks of game films for hours at a time, something today's Dolphins still do.

"The record for showing a film over and over is still 72 times," Langer said.

One game?

"One play," Langer said.

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Ask Don Shula about growing up, and he will point to a scar on the right side of his nose.